What to Look for in an Answering Service Contract?

Choosing an answering service for plumbers requires taking under consideration and signing a contract that meets business requirements and objectives. The service components that are contained in the contract will dictate the standards of service delivery and do have an impact on the customer. Below is a checklist of things that one should look at whenever they are comparing an answering service contract.

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What do the Service Level Expectations contain?

The answering service contract involves an SLA, which defines the quality and response time of the service. The other two areas that need explanation are how soon the service will answer the call, how long the caller will have to wait for the call to be answered, and how long the call can be on hold. An SLA gives you the guarantee that the customers will be provided with fast and efficient services, thus protecting your company’s reputation for quality customer services. The contract should also show the readiness of the service to be accessed any time of the day or limited to business hours and such should be well responsive to a business persons needs.

What Are the Components of the Service?

Answering services can vary greatly ranging from mere message answering up to sophisticated call answering, appointment setting, and customer support. Ensure that within the general package offered the specific services to be provided are fully captured in the contract. Multilinguality, call specificity, and after-hours support are some of the questions asked regarding the answering service. Knowing what the contract entitled is helps avoid confusion and guarantees the service is what the business requires.

How Flexible is the Contract?

One of the factors that should inform the engagement of an answering service is flexibility. As business changes, so do the requirements and having a fully formalized contract may hamper your choices. Use keywords that can be adapted to one’s requirements, particularly the ability to increase or decrease the number of call centre agents, or the length of time the call centre will be open as your business expands or when there are times that are busier than others.

Who are the Data Security and Confidentiality Provisions?

As the business calls involve personal and/or financial information, one should pay special attention to the data protection terms in the contract. The answering service should be required to have specific clients’ confidentiality standards that can cover the process of calls storage and treatment. See that the service conforms with any regulations within this industry concerning the aspects of confidentiality.

How Will Billing Be Managed?

Billing terms are among the most sensitive aspects in any contract. Pay a special attention to the payments in terms of frequency, method, price, and all necessary conditions for payment and its goal, as well as, the total service cost and possible additional charges. Is the payable calculated according to the per call, per month plan or per each hour used? Since some answering services may differ in services they offer, it is crucial to know how your bill is going to change each time you use the service. The payment schedule should also be included together with the agreed periods within which the contract holder is allowed to make payment in the incidences where he or she has failed, then the penalties to catch up should be included.

What is a Dispute Resolution Process?

It is believed that both of the parties will cooperate effectively; however, it is possible to plan for any future complications. The types of contracts also should contain provisions regarding all the possible disputes and the ways for their resolution regarding your business and the answering service. Such measures could have involved using a third party, for instance through negotiations or using an independent person to help in solving the dispute before taking law Court action.

Conclusion

Answering service contracts must be clear, adaptable, and relevant to the company’s objectives when signing the contract. When it comes to expectations of services and the incorporation of features, data protection, and pricing policies, it is important to evaluate and make a decision which will suit the organisation’s needs and its clients. Spending adequate time in evaluating and negotiating the contract will go along way in preventing the reap of the head and have a good working relationship with the answering service.

Freelancer's Guide to Staying Motivated and Productive at Home

 

Working from home as a freelancer offers unparalleled flexibility and freedom, but it also comes with its own set of challenges. Staying motivated and productive in a home office setting requires discipline and effective strategies. Here’s a guide to help you maintain focus and achieve your goals while enjoying the benefits of freelancing from home.

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1. Establish a Dedicated Workspace

Creating a designated area for work can significantly boost your productivity. This space should be comfortable, well-lit, and free from distractions. Having a specific spot for work helps signal to your brain that it’s time to focus, making it easier to switch into work mode.

2. Set Clear Goals and Prioritize Tasks

Start each day by outlining your goals and prioritizing tasks. Use a planner or digital tool to organize your to-do list, breaking down larger projects into manageable steps. This approach not only keeps you on track but also provides a sense of accomplishment as you check off completed tasks.

3. Maintain a Routine

Establishing a consistent daily routine can help you stay disciplined. Set regular work hours and include breaks to recharge. A structured schedule helps create a work-life balance, ensuring you have time for both professional and personal activities.

4. Minimize Distractions

Distractions are a common challenge when working from home. Using ad blockers can aid concentration by reducing online interruptions, allowing you to focus on your tasks without being sidetracked by unnecessary content.

5. Take Regular Breaks

Incorporate short breaks into your workday to prevent burnout. Step away from your desk, stretch, or take a quick walk to refresh your mind. Regular breaks can enhance creativity and improve overall productivity.

6. Stay Connected

Freelancing can sometimes feel isolating, so it’s important to stay connected with colleagues and clients. Use communication tools to maintain regular contact and participate in online communities or networking groups to share experiences and gain support.

7. Invest in Professional Development

Continuously improving your skills can boost motivation and open up new opportunities. Set aside time for learning, whether through online courses, webinars, or reading industry-related materials.

8. Practice Effective Tax Planning

Financial management is crucial for freelancers. Effective tax planning can provide peace of mind regarding financial obligations, allowing you to focus on your work without the stress of unexpected tax issues. Consider consulting a financial advisor to ensure you’re maximizing deductions and staying compliant.

Conclusion

Staying motivated and productive as a freelancer working from home requires a combination of discipline, organization, and self-care. By creating a dedicated workspace, setting clear goals, and minimizing distractions, you can enhance your productivity and enjoy the benefits of a flexible work environment. Remember to take care of your financial health through effective tax planning, ensuring a stable and stress-free freelancing career.

Understanding the Pros and Cons of Share Trading and CFD Trading

Both Stock Trading and CFD Trading offer great means to profit in the financial market by speculating the price movement. But if you are torn between using CFDs or Stocks, then here’s a quick overview of them here. Check it out here;

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CFD Trading

Contracts for Difference (CFD) allows you to speculate on the market price from the underlying asset, without paying for the actual amount and the ownership of the underlying asset. For instance, you are thinking that the value of shares of Facebook will rise. If so, you can buy shares from your CFD broker. If your prediction turns correct and the stock value rises, you can sell the CFD to a new price with a much higher value. Your broker will be at the losing end and the difference will be returned to your account.

Share Trading

Although these two allow speculation of price movement in the market, Share Trading is preferred for long positions. With shares of stock trading, you are buying actual and physical company shares. But the process is just the same, you speculate on the price movement. But with CFD, you can use leverage to your advantage. Paying only 5-10% of the actual price of the asset but being able to open a larger position is already a good deal for retail traders.

CFD Trading or Stock Trading – Which One Is The Best Choice For You?

If you are yet to decide which one to use, here's a clear comparison of Stock Trading and CFD Trading.

Ownership

The most obvious difference between CFD and stock trading is ownership. In CFD, you don’t own the underlying asset but you can still speculate on its price movement but you don’t own it. But with stocks trading, you will have to buy the company share with its actual price before you can speculate. Buying the company shares gives you its full ownership.

Finance

The ability to finance each trade is also very different from CFD and stock trading. In CFD, you are allowed to trade on leverage. With leverage, you can start with a small investment and trade in a bigger position. You initially borrow capital from the broker and return it after a successful trade.

Markets

Access to different markets is another distinction to consider. With CFD, you are able to trade in a number of instruments, from shares, cryptocurrency, and Forex. But stocks are limited only to ETFs and shares.

Fees

If you’re trading, fees and charges are to be considered. Stocks and shares have different fees to be shouldered by the trader. So when you start trading, you need to ensure to know the fees and charges that your broker will deduct from your trading account.

Short and Long Term Trading Strategies

If you are a short-term or intraday trader, the most appropriate product for you is CFDs. But if you are aiming for long-term investment and want to have less risk in trading, then shares and stocks are the best options for you.

Why Do You Need A MetaTrader Demo Account?

Who needs a demo account? Is it for newbies only? Forex demo accounts are offered for free by FX brokers in MetaTrader. Demo accounts are very useful not just for beginners but for traders who already have experience in the market. For beginners, they can use it to test the tides, familiarize the platform, and experience the emotions felt by most traders seeing the losses and gains as they trade with their hard-earned money. Demo accounts are also useful for experienced traders. They can try their trading strategies and polish the old ones.

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Demo accounts also have the same features as a real trading account. Things like market data, indicators, analysis tools, and even get the help of a customer support team. The only important difference between demo accounts and live accounts is the fact that demo accounts do not actually have access to the live FX market, but instead, they are relying on the simulated data.

Who can use a Forex Demo Account?

Beginners who want to try out trading without the same risk as to the live market. It lets them understand the FX market pretty well.

Traders who want to understand the new features offered by brokers, their services, and their entire trading platform as well.

Traders who want to test the platform and understand how everything works on it.

Traders who are looking for a new strategy. They see demo accounts as the perfect place to experiment with a new trading strategy.

Pros and Cons of Demo Account

Knowing the pros is as important as knowing the cons or the disadvantages of demo accounts. Below are the things that you need to know about demo trading accounts?

Pros

Demo accounts are totally free – you won’t have to pay anything when you open a demo trading account. Also, you won’t be asked to deposit funds into your account since you will be given free virtual currency that you can use to trade into your demo account.

Demo accounts expose the trader to the actual situation of the market – since it mirrors the trading activities of the real, live trading, traders can get a glimpse of the market and how it feels to trade with a live market.

Demo accounts help test and develop trading strategies – not just for beginners, demo accounts are also for experienced traders who want to develop and test their trading strategies without the risk that the live market has.

Demo accounts help to better understand the platform’s features and services – your broker would want you to understand the platform more than anything else. Demo accounts should teach you a lot of things.

Cons

It can give traders a false sense of confidence – since you know that demo accounts are not real, and no money is wasted, you may overtrade.

Could encourage bad habits of trading – there are traders using demo accounts who aren’t taking serious time analyzing their trades. This is nothing but a gambling mentality.

Limited funds and time – most MetaTrader trading platforms only offer a few virtual cash to trade in the demo account and the duration only takes a couple of days.

 

 

Long vs. Short: When to Go?

Understanding the fundamentals of going short or long in forex trading is very essential to every beginning forex trader. Taking either of the positions will come down whether he thinks a certain currency will go up or appreciate, or go down or depreciate,  in relation to other currency. Simply, when a trader foresees that a currency will go up, he will go long the principal currency, and when he anticipates that the currency will go down, the trader will go short of that specific underlying currency.

Below are more information that will help traders know and understand more what short and long positions are and when to make use of them.

Forex position is the currency amount which is possessed by a person or entity who  has an exposure to the currency movements against other currencies. Positions can either be short or long. Forex positions have three features, namely: underlying currency pari, direction, and the size.

Traders can yield positions in various currency pairs. If they anticipate that the value of the currency will appreciate, they could decide to go long. The position size they’d take would depend on the margin requirements and account equity.  It is vital that traders utilize the right amount of leverage.

Long Position

What does a long position mean and when to trade it? It is a trade performed where the trader assumes the underlying tool to increase in value. For instance, when a trader performs a buy order, they make a long position in the certain currency they bought like USD/JPY. This example shows that traders expect the USD to increase against the JPY. For instance, a trader who bought two lots of the currency pair USD/JPY has a long position of two lots USD/JPY. The underlying instrument is USD/JPY, the size is two lots, and the direction is long.

Traders wait for the buy-signals to come into long positions. Traders use indicators to look for signals when to buy and sell in the market. A sample of buy signal is when a currency drops to a support level.

The benefit of the currency market is that it trades 24 hours daily and 5 days a week. Some traders choose to trade during major sessions like the London session, New York session, and sometimes Tokyo and Sydney session, for the reason that it is more volatile.

Short Position

Now, what does a short position mean and when do you trade it?
A short position is basically the long position’s opposite. When forex traders enter into a short position, they assume that the value of the currency will go down or depreciate. Going short on a currency means that you will have to sell it in the hope of its price to depreciate in the future, letting the trader to buy back the asme currency at a later time but at a lower value. The profit will be the difference between the higher selling and lower buying price. A practical example will be a trader selling USD to buy JPY.

Traders wait for sell-signals in order to enter short positions. A common signal is when the currency value reaches a resistance level. It is the level wherein the price level of the underlying currency is struggling to break above.

These are just a few of the forex trading’s short and long positions. It is vital to study the market so you can make the right decision of going in the right direction.

 

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How Proper Risk Management Saves you in Forex Trading

 

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A lot of people who are probably reading this right now have probably found themselves either frustrated or too overwhelmed in Forex Trading. It is also safe to assume that some of you have probably looked into quitting all throughout given that your trading account has probably gathered enough damage.

With what is going to be discussed in this article is taken into account, this might have an impact on your trading plan and additional knowledge for proper risk management is implemented, there will be a possibility in recovering from the damage you have incurred.

Some people have probably, if not all, found themselves falling over a long-run and despite a lot of elements can be at play whenever they have experienced failure, there is always one aspect of trading that they have neglected: Risk Management. Most traders who get into trading do not involve themselves in the inner workings of proper risk management and unbeknownst to them, this can be a very powerful tool you can use while trading in the market.

The proper weaponry in winning the battle

Essentially, there are three interconnected aspects of trading that synergizes with one another:
-    Technical Ability: This is the trading strategy you apply, your ability to read charts and make action price trades.
-    Money Management: Self Explanatory, but it dwells on how much money you are willing to risk losing when trading, stop loss placement, position trading and profit targets. In a nutshell, these are the things that you do in order to maintain your capital for trading.
-    Trading Psychology: This is the aspect of trading that represents the mental side of things like resilience and self control.

As much as these are the three aspects that synergize, a lot of people in Forex Trading tend to neglect Money management as it is the aspect that covers proper risk management plans. All the aspects about reading and analyzing charts will not work if you are not able to properly monitor and manage your trading capital. And if you lose your trading capital, that is all she wrote for your stint in the market.

As a trader, you will need to ask yourself why you have engaged in battle (trading) and are you really equipped with the right weaponry to win it? Most traders lose in the market and you will need ask yourself how properly prepared are you in these types of scenarios

It is not enough to become a “good trader”

Uncalculated risks are made by very careless traders and such errors like overly using leverages can be the doom of these people. Putting themselves at unnecessarily big risks can cause your capital to be depleted. Being a good trader doesn’t necessarily cut it anymore as despite them having a good result in the past and have even been hired by big banks and firms, their difficulty in sustaining capital properly is eventually caused by the lack of proper risk management plan as the source of losses.

“Good traders” who are able to analyze charts and project the next move are not going to have a very sustainable future in the market. Those however, who have looked into controlling their risk capital and consistently manage their market exposures are the ones we can expect to stand tall in this line of endeavor If you have lacking skills in preserving your capital, you are definitely on your way to retiring from Forex Trading at a very earlier time that you have not intended. And this retirement is definitely the bad kind.

Key things that you need to look into for Proper Risk Management!

When looking into trading, check if the lemon is worth the squeeze. When trading and it involves a certain amount of risk, make sure that it makes sense, otherwise, it will always be smarter for you to pass it up for a better opportunity.

Some people have different outlooks in risk management and most of them would stick with certain management systems for risks such as “the 2% rule” which might not be a good thing for you as a trader. Look into other rules or philosophies that might help you in achieving a more proper risk management for your trades.

Being able to understand how much of an impact Stop Loss placements have in your risk management system is a must. This is so mainly because you are able to determine until where you stop and declare the risk you can take in a position.

 

Techniques on Trading CFD: 5 Risk Management Options to Mitigate Loss

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Imagine a situation where you continuously get favorable positions while trading CFD. I am very sure that you will definitely feel good to know that you are playing your positions well. But what if things suddenly turn upside down and you never had a chance to activate your stop loss feature? Do you think you could afford losing the whole of your account?If you start to get scared with this thought then this post will help you because we are here to disclose 5 Options that you can do to manage your losses.

1.Apply the 2% policy

This rule is the most commonly applied technique to lessen the risks of trading CFD .  As expected, this policy tells a trader not to invest more than two percent of your available capital in a particular trading session. The max amount should cover commissions and other important fees that are given to the broker.

2.  Account your possible profit

Accurate accounting of expected wins and loss in your positions will give you a picture of your trading experience as a whole. Technically, this can help you cross check your possible profits in various markets. Below is the formula that is used to compute possible profits:

Returns = [(probability of gain) X (take profit % gain)] + [(probability of a loss) X (stop loss % loss)].

3. Consider Taking Profit Points

A moment where you get to sell a stock harness the generated profit from your decision is considered a taking profit point move. This is usually performed when your trade has a limited possibility of going up and would most likely be submitted for consolidation after the occurence of an upward move. Thus, you are able to convert your loss into a more profitable outcome by taking either the partial or full proceeds of your trade at a predetermined rate. In order to do this, you have to possess the skill of  forecasting when to particularly do such an act. One can make a forecast by looking at signals that indicate possible loss.

4. Activate Stop- Loss Orders

This feature is usually available when you sign up for a derivatives trade. As a highly recommended loss mitigation technique, a stop loss order  is usually applied in circumstances where the trader identifies the moment where stocks should be sold. Moreover, the feature helps a trader to establish a plan while his thinking and emotion are in good condition. Upon determining the price for purchasing a financial instrument and the avenues where you have made a mistake on your decision, you can activate your stop loss feature and bail out to have an assurance of profit thereby evaluating its viability.

5. Set up your trading blueprint

Your trading blueprint is your trading plan. We all know that without a trading plan, you will never have an idea where your trade will bring you. Take note that a trading plan will help you feel confident and relaxed even at moments where the commodities become volatile in the market. To set up your trading blueprint,you have to know the cases where you have to execute stop-loss orders, evaluate the points when to get in or out of the market, evaluate your target positions, outline trading strategies, and list down your trading strategies.